Racist or stupid?

 So the national sports poodles have found their new cause celebre, and it is Jon Gruden, former ESPN poodle himself and vastly overrated NFL coach. And what a self-righteous time they're having!

Seems ol' Chucky sent a nasty e-mail about NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith a decade ago (because e-mails never die, and they don't fade away, either), and the Wall Street Journal somehow stumbled onto it. And now Gruden is being compelled to explain himself. 

He's not done a very good job of it so far. Which of course has unleashed a fresh round of condemnation from the poodles.

Here's what the e-mail said: "Dumboriss Smith has lips the size of michellin (sic) tires."

And, yes, that is both juvenile and racist as hell, given that Smith is black.

Or ...

Or,  let's play a new game show, "Racist Or Stupid?", in which we examine whether or not someone trotting out a racist trope means he or she actually is a racist, or just profoundly clueless. Or both.

Here's the Blob's verdict on Gruden's e-mail: Mostly Stupid.

Because I don't believe for a second that Gruden's actually a racist, unless someone uncovers more evidence that racism has been a systemic component of his coaching career. To my knowledge, there isn't any such evidence. And if he was actually as racist as that e-mail suggests, there'd be some.

No, what I think is Gruden was aiming for clever and hit Stupid instead. Like, really, really Stupid. 

How else could he not know that talking about a black man's lips is one of the oldest racist tropes in existence? How could any reasonably educated person be so, well, Stupid?

Well, because some people are. And these days it's not impossible to believe. Hasn't been since the Former President -- himself not the  sharpest tool in the shed -- showed up and started plying all the easy marks out there with nonsense.

I mean, we now live in a country where some people actually think the CIA used military satellites to change Trump votes to Biden votes in the 2020 election. And where there are people who don't trust the CDC and thoroughly tested vaccines, but somehow trust snake-oil salesmen hawking livestock de-wormer as an effective treatment for the Bastard Plague.

We are a nation brimming with dumb, in other words. So is it all that hard to believe a football junkie might be dumb enough not to realize how completely racist that e-mail was?

Not for me it's not. Though opinions, as always, will vary.